


Siltation

by ameliajean



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliajean/pseuds/ameliajean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's a terrible love that I'm walking with<br/>It's quiet company<br/>It takes an ocean not to break</i>
</p><p>"Terrible Love" // The National</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siltation

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Reichenbach.

While, yes, he's indignant as ever, Sherlock knows that he is indebted to John.  
  
He has accrued this debt in sleepless nights, glasses of dark liquor, and that _ache_ ; Christ forbid he feel it too, or admit to just as much pain, because just as he wouldn't make a vertical incision right down his pectoral muscle, crack a few ribs, and hand over his still-beating cardiac muscle before... hell if he's going to do it now without a fight.  
  
No, it isn't fair. It isn't fair that he has to absorb the dark swells of anger and resentment, and it isn't fair that he had to put his life on hold for eighteen months (not that he wouldn't do it all over again, because he would, he would for all of them).  
  
But none of that matters as much as the wrenching in his gut (and what a fresh new feeling _that_ is) or the sick pallor of isolation clouding his skin like fog clinging to the sea's surface on a cold morning. It isn't what he's prepared to say or the amount of time he's prepared to wait for forgiveness that may never come that frightens him— _Sherlock Holmes, afraid?_ —it's the silence.  
  
It's the silence.  
  
The flat won't do for this. There are things there worth smashing. People always, always within earshot. Some things need saying into the deep chasm of earth; perhaps the gulfs will wash them down and out to sea. Perhaps air and salt and open sky will grant him some sort of absolution that their old flat _(home)_ won't.  
  
It doesn't make logical sense. But nothing about this is logical.  
  
"Dont," his voice croaks, and he wants to say _don't-run-hide-leave me without you because I won't survive_. And oh, the irony in that. "Don't say anything. Please, just... come with me."  
  
And God help him, he does. John does. Without a second thought, because he'll still follow that man anywhere. If he were being totally honest with himself, he'd follow Sherlock around the world and back just for the thrill of something more than nothing. Just for the adrenaline of it all. And maybe, maybe a bit more than _just_ that.  
  
John is shell-shocked into silence but his irregular breathing pattern speaks loudly enough.  
  
\----

Away from prying eyes and the life they shared for eons, longer than the Holocene, longer than time itself, it seems—they stand between the chalky white cliffs, below a storm-darkened sky, atop time's finely crushed glass.  
  
John is absolutely livid; nostrils flared, stance defensive, eyes like saucers reflecting the cloud-scattered sky. "Have you ever thought of anyone but yourself? Your entire life, Sherlock? Have you?"  
  
And Goddamnit, the man laughs. He  _laughs_.  
  
"Now it's funny?" John continues on, anger choking his words. "Christ, you—"  
  
"You are  _destroying_ me, do you understand?" Sherlock bellows. The echo of his voice tapers into the void until the sea swallows it whole.   
  
John's expression twists into something resembling... regret?  
  
"I was alone. I was so alone, you don't..."  
  
"I don't what? I don't understand? Oh, quite. Quite right. How could I?" he shakes his head, lips curled in anger. "I'm only thinking of myself. This whole time, crossing the continent alone, without shelter, without food, killing indiscriminately so that one day I may come home to flatmate—to a friend—who despises me. Of course. Obvious, really."  
  
And is that crack in his voice about to spill an ocean between them?  
  
"You should have trusted me."  
  
"I couldn't risk losing—"  
  
"Yes, I know, your precious lead on Moriarty. It's all a game and I'm just a pawn, isn't that right? Well, you can go straight to hell, Sherlock Holmes," John nearly spits the words at him, and if it weren't for the way his shoes have sunk into the sand, he could storm off in a proper huff.  
  
It's so quiet he nearly misses it.  
  
"You're wrong."  
  
John finally, finally looks him in the eye, and it is torture. "Excuse me?"  
  
Sherlock's coat flaps in the wind like a screen door left unlatched in a storm, and the way his hair lies, the sallowness of his cheeks, the grooves at the pulled-tight corners of his mouth—it's wrong. It's all wrong. He's not the same man who could once claim impartiality. This man, standing here before someone just as worn-down as he, is utterly lost.  
  
They will never be the same two people they once were.   
  
And this will settle it, like sand in the bath.  
  
"I was unhappy before we met, but I was bloody brilliant. Yes, I lived only for myself. It is far easier to live without attachments, lending my time when I'm needed and keeping it for myself when I'm not. It was easy to eat alone, to think alone, to sleep," and here he stops, because they haven't discussed this yet, and maybe they never will, but now isn't the time.  
  
John's chest constricts when he picks up on the man's transition to past-tense.  _(When? When did things change between them?)_  
  
Sherlock clenches a fist and resumes speaking, voice shaking beneath the weight of it all. "And then, there you are. Ordinary John Watson, with your ordinary thoughts and ordinary habits, sediment and clay in clear water, consuming everything that I—clouding everything until I can't—"  
  
"Sherlock—"  
  
"I am  _dying_ so that you may live."  
  
In every sense of the word.  
  
"Don't," John shifts his weight, brow knitted tight in what he labels confusion and knows to be  exactly what it is. He already knows. He knows. But God, he has to ask. "What are you saying, then?"  
  
"You are  _everything_ ," he breathes out, lungs screaming,  _screaming_ for something less than this.  
  
And for a moment, the tides change direction and Sherlock is blessedly silent.  
  
Waves crash and draw back upon themselves, their spray clinging to patches of bare skin and drying there, the salted residue of their love; too fragile, too tender, terrifying.  
  
The anger has completely washed from John's face and is replaced by the expression of a man who's taken an unexpected blow to the stomach. Eyes that reflected a clouded sky only moments earlier sink into their sockets and the tension around his lips slowly gives way to the open-close-open mouth of a fish out of water.  
  
Nothing seems like the right thing to say.  
  
John licks his lower lip.  
  
"Alright," he says, finally, too quiet. "Alright. Okay."  
  
Sherlock is swaying on his feet, exhausted beyond belief. Something deep within John knows that somehow he will be hurt, and they will be hurt together, but in this moment it doesn't matter what  _will_ happen. His best friend needs him  _now_. He is ready to give all of himself to the cause of tending to Sherlock Holmes' ailment (and love is an ailment, certainly, or else the man would choose another existence entirely). It is less a question than it is innate knowledge.  
  
No, he isn't truly angry any longer.  
  
In fact, he's just been given exactly what he dared to hope for, days and months and moments alone, salt in his tea and on his pillowcase and unwashed sleeves.  
  
Sherlock lets slip the words he's kept rolled beneath his tongue for all their time apart:  
  
"I want to come home, John."  
  
And there is no hesitation.  
  
"Yes," he says, closes his eyes to take a deep breath, opens them.  
  
The words don't need to be said because Sherlock's expression and body language are spectacularly clear; the thought swims through his mind:  _"Are you sure?"_  
  
For as much as Sherlock owes John, they owe one another. Their debt is shared. The sleepless nights and dark liquor and simultaneous too-empty-too-full feeling in John's chest is endured by cause and effect both; while he salted the earth, Sherlock could only dwell alone and beg the cosmic void to follow right behind with fresh water: absolving, cleansing, still.  
  
John's tone is resolute. "Yes. Always, yes, please... come home."  
  
The space between them closes, each slowly dissolving into the other, into time and its thievery, into what they've known to be true all along.  
  
Somehow, they fit together.   
  
They shouldn't, but they do.  
  
\----  
  
For all the rush of being apart for eighteen months too long, the first time they make love is painfully, blissfully slow. There are no questions; no answers. Only them, blending into one another, touching and tasting and feeling,  _shaking_ to fill their lungs with air.  
  
Sherlock presses his face into the hollow of John's neck and hooks their arms, pulling him closer to him, into him, crashing and breaking and retreating just enough to be drawn back in.  
  
John tilts his hips to lie flush against Sherlock's bare skin and there it is; the salt is no longer his own. He feels it wet on his skin, trailing from his collarbone back onto Sherlock's chest, and swallows a sob.  
  
John understands. "I'm sorry."  
  
He has silted every drop of the man's very existence, muddied it, shuffled his feet and left the dried remnants clinging to every inch of skin—  
  
"Don't be sorry," Sherlock nearly chokes on the words, and, "I'm not."  
  
They are suspended, timeless, covering lips with lips just to breathe the same air as one final wave crashes to cover them both.


End file.
